306 • THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 



donkey or not — whether Mr. Melon may have fairly 

 compared himself or not — certain it is that I don't 

 mean to go on much longer without the aid of one of 

 these trustworthy carriers upon the farm. Standing 

 about just where they are placed, in harness and the 

 shafts all day, they are at everybody's beck and call, 

 to do their ready service — whether the cowman may 

 desire his feeding-hampers hauled to the distant sheds, 

 or roots brought in, or a small additional cut of best 

 clover-hay for the Sultana of the day, or a package for 

 the housekeeper fetched from the town — " ready ! 

 aye, ready ! " is the motto of our obedient, industrious 

 friend. A very different sort are they, however, from 

 the donkey of the desert. A friend of ours, who has 

 been sent to Suez as an invalid, and who was used 

 until two years since to lead the hunting-field through 

 bullfinches and over brooks upon gigantic weight- 

 carriers, is now reduced to conveyance upon a Cairo 

 donkey ; but he writes in raptures about them. The 

 one he has purchased for himself prefers cantering to 

 walking : hear that, ye, his English congeners ! and 

 beats any pony, he says, that he ever owned in his " ain 

 countree." The same gentleman writes in wonder at 

 the exceeding strength of the native porters who live 

 on nothing but beans — a sort from which some patent 

 pap is made in England. One instance he mentions of 

 a load being earned by one of these men fifty yards on 

 to a vessel, the captain of which immediately weighed 

 it and found it seven cwt. ! This sounds incredible, 

 but our informant is not given to romancing. To slip, 

 however, from Cairo to the Cape, we have just letters 

 from another friend, who had been for some months 

 hunting, and who during September and October last 



